Nicole Sealey facts for kids

Nicole Sealey (born 1979) is an American poet. She was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and grew up in Apopka, Florida, USA. She used to be the executive director of the Cave Canem Foundation, which helps Black poets.

Nicole Sealey has won several awards for her poetry. In 2015, she won the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her book Ordinary Beast was also a finalist for a big award in 2018. In 2021, her poem "Pages 22–29, an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure" won a Forward Prize for Poetry. Today, Nicole Sealey lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Becoming a Poet

Nicole Sealey was born in the St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. She later moved to Apopka, Florida, where she was raised. She studied Africana studies at the University of South Florida.

From 2005 to 2010, Nicole attended workshops at the Cave Canem Foundation. Here, she learned from famous poets like Marilyn Nelson and Patricia Smith. At 32, she decided to become a full-time poet. She then earned a special writing degree from New York University.

Her poems have been featured in many well-known publications. These include The Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review.

Awards and Fellowships

Nicole Sealey has received many special honors and awards. These include support from groups like CantoMundo and the American Academy in Rome. She also received help from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

In 2019, she was chosen as a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. This fellowship helps artists and writers work on their projects. From 2017 to 2019, she led the Cave Canem Foundation. She also helped create a special series of "Poem-a-Day" readings in 2020.

Poetry with a Purpose: Erasure Poems

Nicole Sealey creates a special type of poetry called "erasures." This is where a poet takes an existing text and removes words from it. The remaining words then form a new poem. It's like finding a hidden message or story within another text.

She started making erasures from a 2015 US government report. This report looked into community issues in Ferguson, Missouri. In October 2021, her erasure poem from this report won a major award. It was the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.

The judges of the prize praised her work. They said she used the report's difficult language to create "new moments of lyrical beauty." They also called her poem "a poem of resonant cultural and social value." This means her work is important for both art and society.